I cover science and public policy, environmental sustainability, media ideology, NGO advocacy and corporate responsibility. I'm executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project (www.GeneticLiteracyProject.org), an independent NGO, and Senior Fellow at the World Food Center's Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy at the University of California-Davis. I've edited/authored seven books on genetics, chemicals, risk assessment and sustainability, and my favorite, on why I never graduated from college football player (place kicker) to pro athlete: "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It". Previously, I was a producer and executive for 20 yeas at ABC News and NBC News. Motto: Follow the facts, not the ideology. Play hard. Love dogs.

Berkeley Anti-Atrazine Crusader Blames 'Big Ag', Set To Sue, After University Dispute Over Dwindling Research Funds

Under relentless attack by those touting Hayes’ work, the EPA examined the frog allegations in 2007, concluding, “atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development based on a review of laboratory and field studies, including studies submitted by the registrant and studies published in the scientific literature.”

The dying frogs theory seems largely relegated to the Berkeley lab. “Atrazine has been used widely in South Africa for the past 45 years, and our studies showed that Xenopus are doing equally fine in agricultural and nonagricultural areas,” zoologist Louis du Preez of North-West University in South Africa noted in 2010. African clawed frogs do not appear to be suffering from the herbicide in their native habitats. “If atrazine had these adverse effects on Xenopus in the wild, surely we would have picked it up by now.”

Threat to human health?

But the most explosive charge was Hayes’ belief, echoed by anti-pesticide activists, that atrazine could cause endocrine related developmental health problems in humans. But where were the data? To support that theory and as evidence that Hayes is being persecuted, reporter Basken draws on an article published on the website Environmental Health News. EHN is run as an anti-chemical propaganda vehicle by John Peterson Myers, who the reporter positions as an independent and highly respected neutral observer.

According to the EHN piece published in June, Syngenta has run an “aggressive multi-million dollar campaign that included hiring a detective agency to investigate scientists on a federal advisory panel [and] looking into the personal life of a judge.” In fact Myers is a controversial out-of-the-mainstream campaigning scientist and longtime crony of Hayes.

Both Hayes and Myers have tried over the past 15 years to pump what’s known as the “endocrine disruptor” theory. That’s a novel, widely circulated notion popular with the Environmental Working Group, Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council and other anti-chemical activists, including a tiny but vocal minority of scientists, in part because mysterious illnesses can be claimed even in the absence of hard data. They’ve made a particular point of championing Hayes’ questionable findings.

According to these critics, chemicals like atrazine and Bisphenol-A (also much maligned by activists, but which a slew of new studies show is also comparatively benign) can be blamed for everything from cancer to obesity, retarded neurological development, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, infertility and disorders related to sexual development. Hayes’ deformed frogs were touted as a central piece of evidence.

These are catastrophic allegations, which if supported by the evidence would warrant immediate intervention. But the evidence falls short. Responding to alarm bells rung by activist scientists and DC-based lobby groups, the government in recent years has commissioned tens of millions of dollars of studies on the endocrine disruption hypothesis with no conclusive evidence to support it.

In the case of atrazine, without any real data from Hayes or other research supporting his contentions, the independent government oversight and mainstream science community has rejected his relentlessly alarmist conclusions.

“Dr. Hayes claims not only that his laboratory has repeated the findings many times in experiments with thousands of frogs, but that other scientists have also replicated his results,” said Anne Lindsay, then deputy director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs in 2005, in government testimony. “EPA, however, has never seen either the results from any independent investigator published in peer-reviewed scientific journals nor the raw data from Dr. Hayes’ additional experiments.”

Recently, Australia’s Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts—it’s EPA—carefully reviewed Hayes latest study, from 2010, finding the lab work flawed and recommending no change to its conclusion that atrazine is safe as used. The EPA concurs. Donald Brady, director of the EPA’s Environmental Fate and Effects Division, stated in a publicly released letter that the agency “could not properly account for the sample sizes and study design reportedly used by the Berkeley researchers.” That’s bureaucratize and science-speak for saying Hayes peddles junk science.

The emerging scientific consensus is that restrictions placed years ago on atrazine in response to anti-chemical campaigns were too stringent rather than not tight enough. Following an extensive review of the latest scientific studies, the World Health Organization moved in 2011 to raise the allowable levels of atrazine in drinking water by 50 fold.

Of course none of this contextualized reporting found its way into Basken’s article, which portrayed Hayes as a hero-under-siege. The article also passes along some outright false statements, apparently because the reporter relied on Hayes as a reliable source. He quotes Hayes as claiming Berkeley officials may have targeted him out of a “desire to protect a $25-million, five year research agreement between Berkeley and Novartis, a parent company of Syngenta.”

That’s an explosive charge. In fact, the five-year research agreement that Hayes’ research was theoretically endangering was from Novartis and dates back 15 years, to 1998, before Novartis and Astra Zeneca spun off their agri-businesses to form Syngenta. The grant expired by 2004.That one-time grant aroused controversy at the time. Activist critics cited it as an example of a big corporation corrupting science at a public university—allegations dismissed after an independent investigation that cost the university almost a quarter of a million dollars. The Chronicle of Higher Education reporter could have easily dug out what really transpired by talking to university officials or even through a simple Google search. Instead he just passed along a discredited bogus allegation.

Hayes contends he has in effect been fired because he’s the ‘good guy’ fighting an uphill battle against the university and Big Ag conspiring against him. But what really went down at Berkeley? There is certainly no evidence of a conspiracy theory.

“I … just wanted to state in no uncertain terms that the university’s administration has not frozen his funds or taken any other steps against him,” I was told in an email from Dan Mogulof, Berkeley’s public affairs executive director. The situation is far more mundane than” Hayes claims, he adds. “The professor had a standing deficit with our animal lab as a result of unpaid care/feeding/maintenance bills. So, his departmental business manager was forced to draw from his account to pay the bill, thereby depleting his available resources given his recent challenges when it comes to attracting funding…. The university has no institutional ties, contracts or connections with Syngenta, and the contract with Novartis lapsed about ten years ago and was not renewed,” Mogulof added in a subsequent email. “In other words, not only didn’t the administration take any actions against Prof. Hayes, there is also an absence of any motive.” In fact, the university is providing bridge financing for Hayes and keeping care of his frogs in case Hayes is able to rustle up more funding.

Hayes continues to contend that the university jacked up his fees and targeted him specifically. “I must also note,” writes Mogulof, “that he [was] charged by the lab in the EXACT same manner as his faculty peers.”

By most accounts, Hayes is a celebrity obsessed and self-promoting (read his self-written Wikipedia page for a laugh) activist scientist who has a history of turning out questionable studies. It’s seems reasonable to conclude that Berkeley had had it up to here with Hayes’s antics and mismanagement. That said, they have carefully refused to take any action against him. This current brouhaha has been brewing for years as Hayes drained his research funds and failed to extract funding. Excising the professors phony “smoking gun” charge from the Chronicle of Higher Education article we are now left with a much clearer and more factually based picture of what has probably gone down in Berkeley.

Skepticism about the integrity of Hayes’ research is compounded by his erratic professional behavior. For years he has been sending abusive rap like email barrages filled with salacious comments to Syngenta employees. For example, in March 2008, after Hayes apparently turned down an offer to meet directly with the company, he emailed an executive: “everywhere i go i cause a raucus; act like you know that’s how i do it m*th* f*ck*s.” Asked to desist, Hayes responded: “I told ya, you can’t stop the rage.” Syngenta was concerned enough by the fusillades that it filed an ethics complaint with the university that included an astonishing document with 102 pages of bizarre emails.

Hayes resurfaced again this past weekend. There he was in San Francisco as the signature speaker at a “save the frogs” event—part of an ongoing series of regular presentations he helps set up to preserve and promote his now threatened status as a ‘go to’ star source for anti-chemical campaigners. Hayes also announced he had retained a lawyer to challenge the university’s decision to freeze his research budget.

Pesticides such as atrazine present challenges for regulators. They provide huge benefits, including the ability to pump yields with limited ecological damage, which has cut production and food costs and led to more nutritious foods. But because of their potential toxicity when misused, prudent regulatory oversight is essential. That requires careful balancing. The government has to rely on the work of independent researchers. If ideology becomes more important than data than the public pays the consequences.

That returns us to the role of journalists, like Basken, in this fiasco. Why have journalists refused to provide a balanced perspective on pesticides and other chemicals? Simply stated, many reporters are poorly schooled in science. They often do not have the sophistication or inclination to apply weight of evidence criteria or critically parse science from ideology.

The EPA will soon be undertaking its regularly scheduled periodic review of atrazine, but Hayes data, long since discredited, will not be part of the process. Hayes has led the international regulatory community on a wild goose chase for more than a decade, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. In a world where public research funds are limited and dwindling, that borders on criminal.

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Two questions: Have some countries (Italy, Germany) already banned Atrazine and if so, why? Second, if Dr. Hayes research work is so sketchy, why would his university advance him to full professor rank?

Jon, Excellent article. Hays is an embarrassment to his University and to science in general. He has cost society a great deal of money and stirred a good deal of unnecessary fear in the general population. The whole thing is just sad

Forbes or Jon Entine himself has deleted now dozens of comments that present facts that show this article clear falsehood. I linked EPA and Center for Disease Control reports that directly recognize the harm to human health atrazine causes.

Hi. I live in Kauai as well and had an opportunity to chat with Jon. I notice they erase tons of comments .Who does that? Jon or Forbes? Thank you for your great awareness. Moms united will make a huge difference. No monetary amount can make as sell outs to put our children in danger. Aloha!

You said that the reason Atrazine was banned in Europe is that is too wet here.Jon says it is pure politics….And Kevin doesn’t know why.He was getting back to us with that.Soooo, what is it ,what is it? I am intrigued by such science that seems to have so many answers…. By the way, the west side of Kauai used to be an estuary and Kauai is considered the wettest spot on Earth….so, if you can see how that can be a problem. Please expand. Thank you.

Really? An embarrassment huh? And this is how he got to his position, being an idiot? If his findings are true, what do you think a company and all those who use this product would do? Would they say “Oh we can’t use this. We’ll just have to lose all that money. We must keep the public safe”. Yeah, right. People have been killed over information like this. He’s lucky they were able to discredit him.

I don’t consider myself to be an “anti-chemical activist,” yet I am in that alleged “tiny but vocal minority of scientists” who does work in this field; frankly, I’ve never found us to be a particularly numerically sparse lot. I’ve mixed these compounds into ppt doses with my own hands, applied them with my own hands (and a pipette), and monitored outcomes for myself and seen endocrine effects at doses that are relevant to what is present in the environment. That’s not activism, it’s just science and it’s testing hypotheses. Also, I think it’s important to keep a focus on the work, not the person, when we’re discussing the validity of findings or weighing evidence.

Emily, I’d agree the discussion should concentrate on the issues, but this article was supposed to be a response to hub bub around Hayes, not specifically the atrazine or ED issues.

Also to be fair, Entine said “…popular with the Environmental Working Group, Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council and other anti-chemical activists, including a tiny but vocal minority of scientists …”, which I read as the pre-stated groups having a few scientists among them, not all scientists in general.

I didn’t read “That’s a novel, widely circulated notion popular with the Environmental Working Group, Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council and other anti-chemical activists, including a tiny but vocal minority of scientists, in part because mysterious illnesses can be claimed even in the absence of hard data.” that way, but am willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

We’ve already talked about some of this on Twitter, but even when discussing the “hubbub” around Hayes, I think, as a scientist, that I’d prefer adherence to facts, even potential implications, without epithets, even if the person whom we’re talking about has done it. As many point out about Hayes, using unfiltered language does not tend to do one’s argument much good.

Atrazine caused my daughters birth defect. Its called gastroschisis. Her stomach, intestines and colon were on the outside of her body when she was born. She was also a month premature and weighed 4 lbs when she was born. She spent 82 days in the NICU. How is this safe?

It could not be more clear to me that this is a PR flack piece for Syngenta. Dozens of disagreeing and fact-checking comments have been deleted, as well as Dr. Hayes naysayers called out for unscrupulous behavior in other arenas.

I am so sorry you went through that. Unfortunately people like Jon deny this. He told me that not ONE single case of health problems have been linked to it. The fact that the industry uses this is an absolute travesti. No concern whatsoever on the consequences of their actions. How the CEOs are not prosecuted escapes my level of understanding .

Johnson83 says “Jon, I’m not sure what qualifications you hold to be a skeptic of science, but I would suggest you go back to the basics and actually do a review of the primary literature on which you are basing your arguments. As a PhD environmental scientist, I find your research weak and laughable. Forbes, please get a real scientist to do this important reporting.” I concur.

Dear Jon Entine, who writes about science with a skeptical eye. You raise some interesting and valid points about Hayes’ work. However, your entire argument is invalidated, in my opinion, with your flagrant inaccuracies (or deceptions?) about the research on Bisphenol-A. There’s this great research tool called Google Scholar – you should check it out.

To all of Entine’s readers, I urge you to go to Google Scholar and type in ‘Bisphenol A health impact’. You will find articles such as this 2009 EPA / NIH statement about the very real health concern that BPA poses: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2967230/. If you read through this or the many other articles that Google Scholar will direct you to, the scientists who feel that BPA poses a risk are hardly a “tiny but vocal minority” as Mr. Entine suggests.

Here’s another (of many) EPA documents indicating the dangers of Atrazine. Seriously, did you just take the check from Syngenta yourself, or does Forbes twist your arm and keep the payoff themselves for this advertisement?

Here the EPA suggests midwesterners drink bottled water due to Atrazine contamination:

Atrazine caused my daughter’s similar abdominal wall defect and her chromosome aberrration. The EPA admits in its own documents Atrazine causes these human health problems, even going so far as to suggest midwesterners buy bottled water to avoid Atrazine contamination.

Ms. Karvunidis has posted a long critique of atrazine and this article: http://www.chicagonow.com/high-gloss-and-sauce/2013/08/forbes-atrazine-jon-etine-082013/

I encourage those concerned about atrazine and chemical toxicity–and scientific and journalistic integrity–to read it.

The assertion that atrazine has been found unsafe by international regulatory agencies is factually inaccurate. Ms. Karvunidis misrepresents the conclusions of numerous agencies, including the EPA. Stated in the scientific vernacular, EPA has been unwavering in its conclusion that there is no evidence that atrazine as people are normally exposed to causes either cancer or birth defects. Below I address the many misstatements of Ms. Karvunidis’s and discuss the current state of the research on atrazine:

CDC AND BIRTH DEFECTS Ms Karvunidis deceptively presents information from a well-known critic of atrazine, Paul Winchester, as if they are the conclusions of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) itself. They are not. Ms. Karvunidis wrote:

The Center for Disease Control mentions Atrazine and birth defects,”Gastroschisis and omphalocele are congenital abdominal wall defects (AWD). Atrazine and nitrates are common agricultural fertilizers” and concluded, “Indiana has significantly higher rates of AWD [abdominal wall defects] compared with national rates. Increased atrazine levels correlate with increased incidence of AWD.”

If you click on the link she provides you go to the Winchester study not to the CDC; the quote is pulled from Winchester’s conclusions. He used statistics from the CDC database in his study, but that study does not represent the work, study or conclusions of the CDC itself. While the Winchester study has gained a lot of currency among atrazine critics, the EPA and EPA’s independent Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) has dismissed it because of its poor quality.

In its 2010 evaluation of Winchester and several other studies making similar claims, the EPA SAP wrote: “…the overall quality of these studies was relatively low, thus limiting their applicability to the upcoming review of atrazine or the more general issue of incorporating epidemiology in risk assessment…. two of the five published studies used an ecologic design (Mattix et al., 2007; Winchester et al., 2009). http://www.epa.gov/scipoly/sap/meetings/2010/020210minutes.pdf p.11.

The EPA in its critique of the study wrote, among other things, that Winchester’s data might not even “reflect actual exposure.” USEPA (2007), Framework for Incorporating Human and Epidemiologic & Incident Data in Health Risk Assessment. P. 60.

On birth defects in general, the EPA and others have conducted and reviewed rigorous scientific animal studies to evaluate the reproductive and developmental toxicity of atrazine. These studies have consistently shown that atrazine does not cause birth defects and does not cause reproductive effects.

The World Health Organization (WHO) specifically stated in a 2007 report (ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a1556e/a1556e00.pdf) that atrazine is not teratogenic, which means it is not a cause of birth defects.

The APVMA – the Australian equivalent of the EPA – has also stated concluded that atrazine doesn’t cause birth defects: “The APVMA has not seen any direct evidence that current uses of atrazine pose a risk to human health. Indeed, extensive studies in laboratory animals show that there are no effects on health or reproduction in mammals maintained on drinking water containing atrazine and related compounds at low levels. Even at concentrations up to 100 times the levels that can sometimes be found in groundwater in the USA, laboratory test results indicate there were no toxic effects on the animals, their progeny or their ability to reproduce.” (Australian Pesticides & Veterinary Medicines Authority, Final Review Report & Regulatory Decision, Volume 1, 2008)

THE EPA AND CANCER On this issue, Ms Karvunidis appears to completely misunderstand the report that she cites. She states simply, “Here, let’s let the EPA’s own words tell the problem with Atrazine” and hyperlinks this quote from an EPA report: “Atrazine is a commonly reported groundwater contaminant.”

Contrary to Ms Kavunidis’s assertions, however, that report states that atrazine is not a carcinogen. If you follow the hyperlink, you’ll come to this EPA document: USEPA TEACH database (2007). http://www.epa.gov/teach/chem_summ/Atrazine_summary.pdf.

Here’s what the EPA actually concludes:

Carcinogenicity weight-of-evidence classification: The U.S. EPA posted a draft Carcinogenicity Hazard Assessment and Characterization in 1999 (13), and an addendum to the most recent IRED (3) classified atrazine as not classifiable due to insufficient evidence for carcinogenicity. The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies atrazine as not classifiable (Group 3) as to carcinogenicity in humans (http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol73/volume73.pdf).

The words “not classifiable” are regulatory-speak for saying that atrazine does not cause cancer, i.e. there is no reason (“insufficient evidence”) to classify atrazine as a human carcinogen.

The TEACH database cites earlier “interim” decisions about atrazine that are consistent with EPA’s final decision document, which reaffirms the conclusion that atrazine is not likely to be a human carcinogen: USEPA April 6, 2006. “Decision Documents for Atrazine: Finalization of Interim Reregistration Eligibility Decision and Completion of Tolerance Reassessment and Reregistration Eligibility Process.” http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/atrazine_combined_docs.pdf p.5

These results are confirmed by the World Health Organization, which concluded that atrazine is “not classifiable as to carcinogenicity to humans,” and placed it in the same cancer risk category as substances such as tea, rubbing alcohol and talc. (World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, 1998.)

Further, the Agricultural Health Study, an ongoing epidemiological study of more than 89,000 participants sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (specifically the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) and the EPA, recently concluded: “Overall, there was no consistent evidence of an association between atrazine use and any cancer site.”

FROGS Ms. Karvunidis misinterprets and cherry picks from regulatory reports and twists data to make it appear as if regulatory scientists concluded nearly the opposite of what they actually concluded. For example, she writes:

“First, the reason the EPA study on the effects of Atrazine on frogs claimed to not be able to refute or confirm that hypothesis is “mainly because of the limitations of the study designs and uncertainties in the data.” It was a problem with the EPA’s own processes. When they solicited help from a third party, FIFRA SAP, they merely concluded, “atrazine does not produce consistent, reproducible effects”. Consistent. Not “none”, not “all the frogs were healthy” but they couldn’t reproduce consistent results.”

The EPA document she refers to is describing the process by which the agency came to its conclusion, which is clearly stated at the top of the next paragraph:

“Based on the agency’s thorough examination of the 19 studies and the 2007 SAP’s subsequent concurrence with the agency’s assessment of those studies, EPA concluded that atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development.” http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/reregistration/atrazine/atrazine_update.htm#amphibian

ATRAZINE IN GROUND WATER Despite the alarms raised by Ms. Karvunidis, the EPA has been very clear time and again that the infinitesimal amounts of atrazine sometimes found in water pose no health risks: “…the Agency has found that there is a reasonable certainty that no harm will result to the general U.S. population, infants, children, or other major identifiable subgroups of consumers from aggregate exposure (from food, drinking water, and non-occupational sources) to cumulative residues of atrazine and the other chlorinated triazine pesticides.” USEPA April 6, 2006, “Decision Documents for Atrazine: Finalization of Interim Reregistration Eligibility Decision and Completion of Tolerance Reassessment and Reregistration Eligibility Process.” http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/atrazine_combined_docs.pdf

BANNED IN THE EU Ms. Karvanudis writes that atrazine is banned in the EU. This is often erroneously stated but is not so black and white as I noted in my article. Regulation in the European Union is based on a “precautionary principle” approach that places burdensome restrictions on whole classes of pesticides that are not in place in much of the rest of the world (including the US) which uses a risk based “weight of evidence” regulatory scheme. For example, as I noted, GMOs are banned in Europe over the objections of the scientific regulatory oversight bodies in Europe and the individual EU countries.

The Australian APVMA (it’s equivalent of our EPA) has tried to set the record straight, here: “It is frequently asserted that atrazine has been banned in the EU. This is an incorrect interpretation of the EC decision. Atrazine has not been assessed and de-registered because of a human health or environmental concern. It is not on any EU ‘banned list’ and could theoretically be reregistered in the EU should the product registrant provide all the required data. Terbuthylazine, a herbicide very closely related to atrazine, is still in use in the EU…” http://www.apvma.gov.au/news_media/chemicals/atrazine.php

In fact, the EU’s own safety review concluded that atrazine was safe to use. Here’s what they had to say: “It is expected that the use of atrazine, consistent with good plant protection practice, will not have any harmful effects on human or animal health or any unacceptable effects on the environment.” European Union Scientific Committee on Plants, United Kingdom, 1996.

You may also wish to note that Tyrone Hayes is not the only researcher who has generated questionable data about atrazine’s safety. It has been recently determined that Mona Thiruchelvam while an assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey fabricated data for two papers published in 2005 in Environmental Health Perspectives and Journal of Biological Chemistry regarding atrazine, maneb, and paraquat’s influence on neuronal mechanisms in Parkinson’s disease.

This type of behavior has far reaching effects in misleading the public and other researchers. According to the Information Sciences Institute, Ms. Thiruchelvam’s papers published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry have been cited 73 times and one of the papers published in the Environmental Health Perspectives has been cited 36 times.